Districts face decision on new achievement test

Friday

May 30, 2014 at 6:00 AM

By Scott O'ConnellDaily News Staff

As field testing for the PARCC test wraps up this spring, school officials in the region are weighing whether they want to join next year's expanded roll-out of the standardized assessment, which could replace the MCAS in Massachusetts.Districts have until Oct. 1 to let the state know if they want to offer the PARCC exam - short for Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers - in third through eighth grade next spring in place of the MCAS. There is also an early decision deadline of June 30 that will guarantee schools' participation.School systems that don't offer the PARCC next year will have their students take the MCAS as usual."I don't know at this point if we can tell what the breakdown will be. But there does seem to be a good amount of interest (in the PARCC)," said JC Considine, a spokesman for the state's education department. "Ideally, what we'd like is to have representative samples taking both tests."After the state administered field tests to approximately 81,000 randomly selected students around the state this spring, next year's wider roll-out will provide even more evidence for or against making the PARCC the state's permanent new standardized assessment, a decision the state education board is slated to make in the fall of 2015."It's a more analytical test (than the MCAS), and that's definitely the direction we need to be going in," said Westborough Superintendent Marianne O'Connor, who said her district is planning to sign up for next spring's PARCC testing by the June deadline."Students are giving us really good feedback - in many cases, they prefer it to the MCAS," Considine said. "They felt very comfortable taking the test online."Considine also said despite the controversy earlier this year surrounding whether students could opt out of the testing, only 86 chose not to take the exams in March and April.But there has been some frustration for parents who have gone that route, like Erica King. The Westborough resident was told by the district that her son, who is in sixth grade, would have to stay home if he was not going to take part in morning PARCC testing this past week."I didn't appreciate being strong-armed to force my son to take a test" that ultimately wasn't going to count toward his record, she said, and was even more upset to be told he couldn't even be at school if he didn't take it.King added the amount of testing her son had to go through this spring - the first round of PARCC field tests as well as the MCAS - "was just ridiculous."O'Connor said the district ultimately was just obeying the state, which had stipulated there would be no official opt-out option. She also said students not taking the test had to be kept home because the district wouldn't have been able to accommodate them otherwise."It was all hands on deck," she said. "We needed everybody we had to work on (administering the test). We just didn't have a place for kids to sit and read."Some districts are taking their time to decide whether they want to do it again next year."We have good knowledge what the test requires from a technology and test administration aspect, as well as experience in how the students embrace this kind of testing environment," said Beth Wagner, a spokeswoman for the Marlborough schools. "Now it's just a matter of deciding what's best for the district moving forward."Scott O'Connell can be reached at 508-626-4449 or soconnell@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @ScottOConnellMW